The U.S. men’s national team’s annual January camp is shifting to a new time of the year.
December will now be the new month for the program’s camp, U.S. Soccer vice president Oguchi Onyewu confirmed Friday. It will begin annually starting in December 2026, five months after the USMNT’s involvement at the FIFA World Cup.
The January camp normally falls outside of a FIFA international window, meaning that European-based USMNT players are not involved. However, MLS-based players are typically included as it falls outside of the season’s schedule.
Many of the current USMNT players have used January camps to boost their international stocks including Tim Ream, Patrick Agyemang, Matt Freese, and Max Arfsten.
“A core pillar of ‘The U.S. Way’ emphasizes two key priorities: expanding opportunities for both youth and senior national team players and maintaining deep, cooperative relationships with our domestic leagues and clubs,” Onyewu said.
“The January camp has long been an important platform for player evaluation and integration, with many current and former U.S. men’s national team players earning their first international experiences during this period,” he added. “Its impact on our program’s growth and player pathway has been significant and enduring.”
The USMNT earned a pair of home wins over Costa Rica and Venezuela respectively during its last January camp earlier this year.
It’s probably in either the CBA and/or the tv contract that they have to have a domestic camp in 2026. So we play it one more time.
————————
Unlikely that someone comes out of nowhere in January to make WC roster so put it in December and let the new manager run the guts through their paces.
this is stupid. i understand the original theory was to bridge the long MLS offseason when the league started in april and ended in the fall. MLS players were then not going to be ready for the march window, and they still might have a couple months downtime before january. so we’d bring guys in for training and games through february, who would then switch over to club preseason, and be fit and ready for games in march that might include qualifiers.
i get MLS moved their season forward and the camp is now overlapping with MLS preseasons. my guess is this is really about avoid that clash. if you put the camp in the literal offseason what is “atlanta” going to say about it.
but my concern here would be december is MLS’ off time and you’d be zapping that for anyone called that window. we have enough injuries. you will increase that for the MLS side if you take away their off time.
last, i am bored with the abstracted, theoretical explanations for our choices at the moment (eg tactics). from just our most recent roster, arfsten, mckenzie, luna, tessmann, aaronson, agyemang, and our top 3 keepers were all january camp first caps. that’s not exactly tim ream debuting 15 years ago. that’s guys as recent as january 2025.
that and to the extent i am hearing that we feel relatively set for the world cup roster, the results don’t support that.
but someone wrote a white paper.
a bunch of other abstracted incorrect hobbyhorse nonsense is batted about in the abstract to imitate europe: (a) college is pointless; (b) college should play yearround; (c) MLS should be traditional schedule; (d) turn over to development to academies.
the scheduling stuff ignores winter weather in the northern tier, and seems to be pushed by noncollege players who don’t realize we’re allowed some spring training and games.
while U20 is no longer 90% college, college still produces a lot of pros and a fair amount of the NT gets at least a season.
many academies are junk. the dynamo it’s been years since we could get a kid to regular first team starting or minutes, despite being routinely trash, much less bigger things, and our 2 good youth NT types (mcglynn and raines) come from other teams’ setups.
The last two U20s had no one who played even a season of college. 10 of the 25 most recent call ups for the NT did play at least one season. Aidan Morris was the youngest at 23. He just missed the MLS Next Pro series (he and Seb Berhalter were with Crew Academy but there was no place at the time to get games at the time so they left Columbus for a semester and then came back. They might have stayed longer but Covid hit). Kids just aren’t going to leave their academies and go to college as much if at all anymore. Colleges are still going to put guys in USL and USL1 with more and more teams joining those leagues, but to send guys to NT is going to be less and less. Arfsten and Agyemang aren’t exactly promoting skill development in college as both lack some basic fundamental understandings. You will still have a few trickle in here and there Bombito for Canada was at Iowa Western CC a few years ago and is now a star in Ligue 1. Agyemang and Dike have made regional contributions.
———————————
As for the USSF recommendations. The committee included athletic directors and former college players so I don’t think the recommendations were Willy Nilly without knowledge of how the system currently works. The “year round” schedule would actually run Sept-Nov (current season) and pick back up in late February – May with some flexibility to play more games in early fall or later Spring for northern teams. Most colleges play on turf so not ideal but does allow for late fall/late winter games. It’s not as crazy as the headlines make it sound. They would end up playing about the same amount of games you just wouldn’t have so many Thursday – Sunday game days with travel in between. You’d be playing mostly one match a week instead of two every weekend. That’s pie in the sky though, USSF would like MLS to take that schedule but that doesn’t mean it’s happening. A lot of the ideas about NCAA and USSF working better together in terms of development and their new TalentID initiatives could actually keep college soccer relevant and provide players with a clearer pathways.